Hot Peppers for 2017

Hot Peppers for 2017

On March 6, in the midst of a deep freeze outside, I finally gave in and stuck seeds into dirt. I decided to skip the Habaneros this year. I also cut out the Jalapenos again. They grew so well two years ago, but I found that I did not use them as much as I had planned. So I’m using the space I would have used on Jalapenos and add some more Cayenne, which will be dried and used as spice for food.

I sowed (on March 6th):

6 peat pellets of ‘Long Red Cayenne Slim’

2 peat pellets of ‘Kung Pao Hybrid’

2 peat pellets of ‘Seranno’

2 peat pellets of ‘Hungarian Wax’

The Serrano was the first to poke its head up, followed closely by the Hungarian Wax and Kung Pao…

Then nothing from the Cayenne. I waited until the 15, and still no sign of life. In the meantime, I added some of the seeds from the same packet into a wet paper towel with bottom heat (same as the peppers), and still nothing. Usually you can see the seeds plump up a bit, and start to send out their root within a few days. All of these seeds had nothing.

So I splurged on a new pack of seeds. I sowed them in 6 peat pellets on the 17th (Happy St. Patrick’s Day!). I kept my fingers crossed these new ones will germinate because the Cayenne is my favourite, and ultimately the most useful for me.

On the 27th, the new Cayenne had started sprouting. Finally! Out of the entire old pack of cayenne (including the germination test), 1 seed sprouted, out of at least 30. So disappointing! I’m glad that I bit the bullet and got the new pack. (This is also why I start my peppers and tomatoes a little early, so I have some time to play catch up with a new attempt)

(Still on the 27th…) The Serrano, Hungarian and Kung Pao are nearly ready to get potted up. They all have their first true leaves, so I will get to potting them up in the next few days. I’ll save that for it’s own update post.

Thank you, as always, for reading. If you have any tips/tricks or helpful advice share it in the comments.

PS. EXTRA Thank you! I just hit 50 likes on my Facebook page for this blog. Which is not that impressive, apart from I put almost zero effort into trying to get anyone to follow over there… I didn’t even send invites to everyone of my friends (just a few who I knew would give me some support). So if you have stumbled to my Facebook page for this blog and liked it… THANK YOU… but if you want to stumble your way over to the Facebook page, and hit “Like” if you haven’t already…I will do a literal happy dance. Every time a new post goes up here, It will be on that Facebook page, so if you don’t want to miss any of my ramblings, head over there, and it will tell you when something new is happening here.